The US general in charge of military operations in space said China’s destruction last year of an orbiting satellite had dispelled the notion of space as a sanctuary and called for heightened international co-operation to share information about what was orbiting the earth.

General Kevin Chilton, head of US Strategic Command, speaking at a military space conference on Wednesday in Paris, urged governments to increase the information they shared about satellites. He said there were now 18,000 observable objects orbiting the earth, much of it debris, presenting increasing risks to satellites